Immigration and the American Dream Theme Analysis

The Sun is Also a Star follows seventeen-year-olds Natasha and Daniel through their whirlwind, one-day romance in New York City. Both are immigrants: Daniel is a second-generation Korean American who very comfortably inhabits the gray area between being fully Korean and fully American, while Natasha's family illegally immigrated to the US from Jamaica when she was eight years old. Unlike Daniel, however, Natasha considers herself fully American. Through the differing experiences of Natasha, Daniel, and their respective families, the novel explores multiple iterations of the immigrant experience and what it means to identify, secretly or otherwise, as an immigrant. In doing so, the novel ultimately proposes that there's no one right way to be an immigrant or an American, and that attempting to impose one's "right" way of being an immigrant on someone else has heartbreaking consequences.

Natasha and Daniel's lives are both shaped by the facts surrounding their parents' immigration to the US. Daniel's parents, Dae Hyun and Min Soo, emigrated from South Korea soon after their marriage. Natasha's parents, Samuel and Patricia, came in waves: Samuel arrived in the US when Natasha was six, and Natasha and her mother followed two years later. Aside from the fact that Daniel was born in the US while Natasha wasn't, the difference that sets the two apart the most is that Daniel's parents came to the US legally, while Natasha's parents overstayed a tourist visa and lived under the radar for years to evade deportation. The fact that Natasha isn't a legal resident is anxiety-inducing in a number of ways and deeply influences how she conceptualizes her identity as an American. She clings to her American identity and wholeheartedly rejects her Jamaican roots, as she believes that doing so is the only way for her to make it in the US. She's proud of the fact that she doesn't have a Jamaican accent and insists that she doesn't remember anything of her childhood in Jamaica—her memories of the US take precedence. Because of these things in particular, she believes that Jamaica holds nothing for her, given how fully she identifies as an American. This belief in particular is what leads her to take matters into her own hands and fight her family's deportation notice, which they received prior to the start of the novel after Samuel received a DUI.

Even though Daniel's parents are US citizens, they exhibit a similar amount of anxiety as Natasha does about being "properly" American, even as they cling tightly to their identities as Koreans. They want Daniel and his older brother, Charlie, to attend the best college (in their eyes, Harvard), marry Korean-American women, and become doctors so they won't have to worry about money. Though Dae Hyun is the only one to name it as such, both he and Natasha experience the anxiety they do because of their intense belief in the American dream. Though the Bae and Kingsley families define the American dream somewhat differently (the Baes focus overwhelmingly on achieving financial success, while the Kingsleys came to the US in the first place because of Samuel's desire to be a famous actor on Broadway), both families ultimately conclude that the American dream either doesn't exist or doesn't exist exactly how they want it to. The Baes must come to terms with the fact that neither of their sons go on to become doctors (though Charlie does become a successful but corrupt politician), while Samuel, extremely disillusioned with his chances in the American entertainment industry, refuses to fight his family's deportation notice. For Natasha, the American dream is very simply to become passably American, as represented by the "good" fake social security card her mother purchased for her in Florida. Until Samuel was charged with the DUI, the card would've allowed Natasha to achieve all the milestones of a college-bound US citizen: financial aid, a degree, and eventually, a job. This suggests that though the immigrant experience isn't necessarily easy for anyone, it's especially risky and difficult for those without the luxury of citizenship, and further, that it's the marker of citizenship that enables someone any real chance at achieving some semblance of the American dream.

For the Bae family, the American dream simply ends up taking a slightly different route—their sons become successful and achieve financial success in their own ways—while for the Kingsley family, the consequences of their immigration status means that the American dream very literally doesn't exist for them, no matter how strongly Natasha identifies as an American. By showing a variety of characters who identify as Americans in wildly different ways and to very different degrees, the novel makes it abundantly clear that there's no one correct way to be American. However, by illustrating how successful those different characters are at being American, and how successful they are at achieving some semblance of the American dream, the novel suggests that being American and pursuing or achieving the American dream are often not one and the same. Regardless of the fact that the US is supposed to represent opportunity for all, in reality, those opportunities exist only for a select few.